


three steps back, shuffle on

by story_monger



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Bigotry & Prejudice, Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-29 11:23:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6372808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/story_monger/pseuds/story_monger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Judy doesn't know when to stop, Nick makes mistakes, the state of the world continues to underwhelm. Working through it all is a team effort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s not the worst day he’s had on the force because Nick still pegs Monday as the worst day. Hard to beat being ambushed by a pair of perps—bighorns; nasty ones—only to let them escape, and Chief Bogo having to chew them out for failing to wait for backup while Nick’s attention was split between his broken rib and the way Judy was holding her left arm. That day was definitely worse. Nick’s just saying this one hasn’t exactly been one of his best.

“I don’t get it,” Clawhauser says.

“Public relations. It’s revolting,” Nick explains.

Clawhauser gnaws on the last fourth of a cookie that started out nearly as big as Nick’s head. Nick decides he’s thinking about his stint in the basement; he must know the evils of the PR office.

Clawhauser squints. “You’re doing patrol work in Little Rodentia. Feels like that’s an easy gig.”

“No, man, look.” Nick leans forward and immediately narrows his cheeks. He keeps forgetting that his torso is a landscape of bruising and broken ribs right now. “It’s not about where they think I’d do the best work,” he says. “It’s about where they think I’m gonna look good for a three-minute segment on the evening news.”

“Hang on.” Clawhauser lowers his cookie and leans over the desk. “Yes, ma’am?”

Nick glances down at a koala in a fusty old sweater who looks like she’s about to complain about the kids playing ball in the street in front of her house. He sighs and turns his attention to the paperwork he’s supposed to file tonight. It’s a thick stack, sitting there beside Clawhauser’s nameplate. He grimaces for more reasons than the ribs and bruises.

“—and take a right; Laurent can help you out.” Clawhauser looks to Nick again. “You’re going to be on the news?”

“No. Probably.” Nick digs his fingers into his scrunched up eyes. “I mean, the headline practically writes itself here. Hey, look, we’re going to assign the fox to the district full of rodents. Look, he’s not even eating any of them. Aren’t we progressive, give us a cake, whoop-de-doo.”

Clawhauser pops the last bite of cookie into his mouth and leans back in his chair, paws folded contemplatively. “I dunno, Nick. I thought this was about giving you and Judy a light load after the bighorn thing.” Before Nick can answer, his ears prick and he spots Judy emerging into the main lobby. The brace around her left wrist flashes white. He huffs and pats Clawhauser on the upper arm.

“You keep on the rose-tinted glasses, bud.”

“They’re not rose-tinted,” Clawhauser says, one hand already searching for the box of doughnuts he keeps stashed under the desk. “I’m not even the one with glasses. Yours are, I dunno, smudgy and stuff.”

“Thanks.” Nick grabs his paperwork and hops down from the second seat; he rounds the desk in time to fall in step beside Judy. She and Clawhauser bid each other a good night and then Nick and Judy are out of the station’s front doors, into the city’s beginning twilight. The ad lights have already flickered on; a ten-foot buck models the sorts of clothes Nick’s only ever seen on people trying to hard.

“So you want to do Harold’s for dinner and we can go to my place to work on this?” Judy flips through her stack of paperwork that, Nick notes with some relief, is at least as large as his.

“Sure,” he says. “What did Francine want?”

“Eh.” Judy waves a paw. “Nothing interesting.” Her eyes brighten and she points at the billboard with the buck, except now it’s showing a movie poster for the latest spy thriller. “Ohh, I’ve been wanting to see that. Kyle says it’s amazing.”

“Mm,” Nick replies. He can feel his left ear twitching and shifts his paperwork from one arm to the other. They turn down a side street, leaving behind the bustle of the main square. “So,” he says. “Little Rodentia for two whole weeks.”

“Oh, yeah.” Judy wrinkles her nose contemplatively. “I’ve never done it before but Rob says it’s easy stuff. The liaisons there usually have things under control. All we’ll have to worry about is helping them out if anything gets out of hand.”

Nick gives her a look. Judy doesn’t catch it or she’s ignoring it, and Nick isn’t sure which annoys him more.

“Seriously?” he says.

Judy’s ears fly up as she looks over at him.

“What?”

“C’mon, Carrots, you swallowed that?”

“Swallowed what?” She slows down, brow furrowing.

Nick fiddles with the hem of his shirt that’s been untucked the last half hour. It’s not as if he didn’t lay this out five minutes ago for Clawhauser, but now, for some reason, the words aren’t organizing themselves correctly. Judy’s still looking at him.

“They just want…” he trails off and rotates a hand, hoping Judy will catch on from there. Which, she’s a smart one; he’s not asking too much of her to see the transparency of it all.

“Want us to…” Judy pauses. “Take it easy? I caught that, yeah.”

Nick smiles without really smiling and hefts his brick of paperwork. “I’m gonna be bored out of my mind,” he says, starting into a walk again. Judy follows a moment later.

***

Finishing paperwork in a dingy, musty apartment with two assholes on the other side of the tissue-thin wall somehow isn’t as terrible as it sounds. Nick suspects it has something to do with the fact that Judy puts on upbeat pop songs and mutters her thought process while she works. Sometimes she kicks her heels against her chair’s legs, making it wobble, and the steady _thump thump thump_ of the chair leg keeps in time with the music, and the tip of Nick’s tail curls up and he realizes he’s relaxed, broken ribs and all.

It’s not the kind of relaxed he was a year ago, on days when Finnick had one reason or another not to come to work and Nick decided to take the day off, lounging in the camping chair he once scrounged from a garage sale. That kind of relaxation always had an edge to it; Nick never liked spending too much time in the glorified patch of grass he used to call home. He knew from experience that all it took was some nosy upright citizen to alert the police that there was a shifty looking mammal hanging around, and then some plainclothes would show up asking the usual questions and Nick would have to move camp. The last location, the bridge, had been in the kind of neighborhood where people had bigger things to worry about than a squatting fox, but you never knew. But now. Well. The irony hasn’t been lost on him for a second. He’s still half dreading, half expecting the day Bogo sends him to take care of a squatter in some dingy corner of the city. He’ll have to bring Judy with him.

“Hah.” Judy rattles her pen across the paper. “Done.” She slaps the form—completed in triplicate—on top of her ‘finished’ pile. She’s lucky she sprained her left wrist, Nick considers.

“Were we racing?” he asks. He’s already smiling.

“We’re always racing if I’m involved. _Hatcha_.” Judy gives two punches to the air and hops down from her chair. “Want something to drink?”

“Nah.” Nick looks at his finished pile. It’s a bit anemic. He scrunches his nose. “What do I pay you to help me finish?” he asks.

“Buy me coffee tomorrow?”

Nick nods. “Fair.”

They spend the next forty-five minutes plowing through Nick’s work, and Judy reveals that she creates a passable forgery of his signature. Nick tells her she’s already halfway toward a life of con artistry.

“How dare you,” she says. Her ears are at an easy angle that tells Nick she’s relaxed too. That gratifies him, somehow.

By the time he has to head home, the events of the day are behind him. He even whistles while he heads down Judy’s street to the bus stop at the end.

Owning an apartment is still a novel concept, but he’s starting to get used to the idea of a place where he’s reasonably sure his stuff will still be there when he comes back. He can’t help but think if he’s not careful he’s going to get a little too comfortable with the idea and become a hoarder.

He grabs his mail in the apartment lobby and flips through it on his way up the stairs. One bill—he’s still getting used to those, too—and the rest is junk advertising. At his door, he pauses and squints at a cardstock ad featuring a tiger with a toothy smile; their fangs have been blunted.

‘Defang, declaw, declutter!’ the ad cheers. ‘Special offer; 10 percent off with this coupon.’

An unnamable heaviness coils in the pit of Nick’s stomach. He flips the ad over, as if that’ll reveal anything, and finds a different iteration of the same deal. This one has a bear looking happy as anything to have nubs for teeth.

He shoves his door open and dumps the mail on its usual spot on his dresser. The bear grins at him through the apartment’s dimness. Nick shoves the ad into the middle of the pile.

***

To be fair, patrolling Little Rodentia is, in fact, mindless. The neighborhood takes up several football fields’ worth of Precinct 1’s southwestern corner; on the first day, Nick times one perimeter patrol at 15 minutes, 43 seconds. They nab a few speed demons coming in and out of the main entrances—Nick lets Judy handle them while he slouches in the patrol car and keeps his ears flat against his head. They’re also expected to keep an eye on the larger neighborhood surrounding Little Rodentia, and that kills some time. Still, by the time their shift draws to a close, Nick’s way too familiar with the details of the neighborhood’s outer wall, and he’s sticking to the leather of his seat.

Judy is more laid back about it than he expected. Part of the reason Nick had given Bogo such an attitude when they were assigned this gig yesterday was because he knows, and Bogo knows, that Judy doesn’t have patience for busy work. But here she is, one hand on the steering wheel, the other hanging out the open window and tapping out the music’s beat on the side of the squad car, seemingly content to let them idle on the neighborhood’s north border. He’s this close to asking her if she’s feeling all right.

“Want to cut out early and grab dinner?” he asks. He checks that his aviators are on. Judy’s gotten too good at reading him these days.

Judy throws him the patented ‘We’re Serious Police Who Have to Seriously Protect the Populace, Seriously, Nick’ look that is either endearing or infuriating depending on what kind of day he’s having. It’s familiar, in any case, and that’s reassuring. What does he know; maybe she’s in the mood to take advantage of a few weeks of light work. It’s plausible. Maybe. He frowns abruptly.

“What?” Judy asks.

“Brain freeze,” Nick says, and slouches down in his seat. His ribs twinge.

“C’mon.” Judy leans over to nudge his shoulder. “You that hungry?”

“Catatonic.”

A beat of silence. Nick looks over, and Judy’s hand has slipped from the steering wheel. Her eyes are narrowed. “Seriously, Nick, do you need to go home?”

“What?” Nick straightens again, and his ribs start up a fresh protest. “Jude, c’mon, I’m being sarcastic.” He slips into an easy smile. “I thought a year in the big city would have taught you the difference.”

“Most people, sure. You’re a different story.”

“Do tell.”

“Yeah, you do this thing where you mix in the truth with a load of pellets and dump it all my lap for me to sort through.”

“That’s a stunning mental image.”

“I mean, you’re not as bad as you used to be, but I still catch you doing it.”

“Do I get to recite your flaws next, or is this a one-way street?”

“You got beat up pretty bad, that’s all. Trying to look out for my partner.”

“Ah.” Nick eyes the brace still on Judy’s wrist. “Yeah.” The sound of diminutive traffic drifts through the window. It’s moments like this that Nick remembers having a friend—an honest-to-goodness friend—is nice and it’s wonderful and it’s also frightening as all hell. He scratches his muzzle and looks out the window in case there’s a speeding rodent that needs their attention. No such luck. A load of perfectly behaved citizens is what he sees.

“We’re not going to nab anyone here,” he says. “They can see us blocks away. Let’s round to the south wall.”

“Sure.” Judy shifts into drive and eases the car forward. “There’s a falafel stand near the south wall, right?”

Nick leans into his seat and gives Judy his toothiest smile.

“I like when we’re on the same wavelength.”

***

The first three days of Little Rodentia go something like that. They listen to Top 40 hits enough that Nick starts to look for alt music stations when Judy lets him control the dial. They exhaust most versions of 20 Questions and I Spy, and by the fourth day, Nick would consider bringing a book if he thought Judy wouldn’t give him a stink eye.

It’s just as well because day number four brings the call for backup from one of Rodentia’s liaisons. Nick doesn’t even register it at first, leaning against the car’s window and starting to doze in the heat. It takes Judy cranking up the scanner for him to jerk to attention.

“—armed. I repeat, one rodent down and attacker is armed.”

“Hopps and Wilde coming in,” Judy barks, already jamming the car into gear. “Location?”

“Northeastern quadrant; a bit of an inner street, I’m afraid. We’d try and shepherd him closer to the outer wall, but he’s got an automatic.”

“Got it.” Judy shoots Nick a sharp look. He understands; the liaisons by necessity know how to handle their own. No good asking for help from the big folks, sometimes, if it risks ruining buildings and roads. The fact that these guys are scared enough to ask for help from ZPD proper is worrisome.

They park a few paces from the wall and hurry for one of the large gaps built for people like them. Civilians gape up at them, and Nick tries not to look too foxish. They edge down the main roads, trying to go slowly enough to give people time to move out of their way but quickly enough to do their job. It’s nerve-wracking, and Nick’s ribs really aren’t helping. Sure, navigating all sizes of neighborhoods was part of training at the academy, but those training courses used little beanbags, and this is actual people. Judy moves just ahead of Nick with more assurance, and he focuses on following her footsteps.

They find the crime scene when they spot the cluster of small cars with the bright yellow Rodentia Neighborhood Task Force labels. Nick can’t see the perp; he does see several rodents crouched behind open doors with guns drawn. In a moment of thoughtlessness, he reaches for his own gun before he remembers the rules. Bullets of that size are too risky here.

A squirrel gestures frantically at them, right as gunfire rattles from behind a dumpster. Nick and Judy duck and cover their eyes; Nick feels a few of the bullets dig into his fingers and forearms like a swarm of bees. He doesn’t bother to refrain from cursing.

“This is the ZPD!” Judy bellows from beside him. “Drop your weapons. We can and will use force!”

An unintelligible shout comes from behind the dumpster accompanied by another hail of bullets. Nick wonders whether the perp has a stockpile back there.

“We’re going to have to just go for it,” Judy says grimly. Nick peeks over at her; beads of blood have appeared on her forearms and forehead. Her expression is stormy. He’d follow that into any rain of bullets; is the single, absurd thing to pop into his head.

“Cover for them,” Judy orders, and she ducks her head and steps over the line of cars. Nick crouches in front of the cars; he’ll have to act as the shield to prevent any more injuries. He knows he’s got a vest and that it’s going to take a lot more bullets to really harm him, but hell, this guy seems to have enough, and Judy is careening toward that with nothing but a ducked head and ears flat against her skull. He turns to the collection of liaisons.

“Any more injuries?” he asks.

The squirrel glances up and down the line of cars.

“None, officer,” she reports. “We were laying low.”

“Good.” Nick flicks his attention back to Judy. She’s pushed aside the dumpster to reveal a large vole with a rifle that would put Nick into a cold sweat if he saw it at his own size. Even this version makes him want to dive forward and yank Judy out of the way. But his training has kicked in, and he stays put. Judy’s a good officer. Judy knows what to do.

She’s leaning down to apprehend the vole; Nick can see the illustrated guide run across his mind’s eye. Confine by trapping the arms to the side and pinching the back of the neck to avoid teeth; apply just enough pressure to do the job, not enough to cause damage. She’s got this. Nick’s sure she did this maneuver perfectly in training.

A crack of the rifle. Judy shouts and jerks back, her hands clapped over her face, and oh _hell_ it better not be an eye. Nick moves forward on instinct, on all fours, and later he’ll wonder about the significance of that little detail. The vole spots him, raises his weapon, and Nick swipes out a hand. It bashes into the vole, knocking him into the concrete; the rifle flies from his hands and skitters to Nick’s left. Judy is squatted down just beside Nick, letting loose a stream of those curses that aren’t really curses that Nick always found endearing because they include things like ‘carrot cake’ and ‘cheese and crackers,’ but there’s a horrifying franticness to her voice and she was shot too close in range and shit, it’s her eye, he knows it’s her eye, she’s going to be blind in one eye and have to leave the force, and he should have been a better partner, and he wants to turn toward her to try and help but there’s an angry vole scrambling toward Nick’s left and a line of rodents that are going to be in the line of fire if the vole gets the weapon and there’s not enough time to _think._

He lunges forward. His teeth find purchase on something small, warm, wriggling. He lifts his head; the vole is caught in the front of his jaw, between his canines. Nick starts to turn toward Judy and the line of cars. He freezes. The liaisons are staring. Judy has lowered her hands enough to reveal one unblemished eye, so there’s that. And he’s the fox with a vole in his mouth.

He lets his jaw drop open on autopilot, and the vole’s fall to the concrete is too far for comfort, but it does stun him long enough for Nick to scramble for a rough version of what he should be doing. Arms trapped on the side; back of neck pinched. He can’t taste blood in his mouth, just the musk of vole, but he tries to find puncture marks on the perp anyhow, but his vision seems to be jumping around and he can’t focus on anything. Then the squirrel and a mouse are there; they’ve got cuffs. Nick yanks his hands away, would scramble backwards if he wasn’t already squeezed between two brick walls.

His breathing comes in too hard; Judy’s groaning; a guinea pig is staring at him with wide, wide eyes, and Nick doesn’t know what to do except shut his eyes in response.


	2. Chapter 2

The bad news is Judy did get hit in the eye, and the good news is no, it’s not going to blind her. That’s what the EMT claims, but Judy’s got a thick wad of gauze taped over her right eye, she still looks a little shell shocked, and Nick’s got a sick _what if_ sitting heavy inside him.

He bites back a hiss when the EMT investigates his forearm, pockmarked with tiny abrasions.

“Yeah, microbullets can be nasty,” she tells him. “You mainly just have to wait for them to expel on their own; use antibacterial to keep them from getting infected. Last thing you want is for these suckers to get infected.”

“Okay.” Nick glances to Judy again. She’s listening to a second EMT talk, probably getting the same spiel. They’ll have to start stashing a bottle of antibacterial spray in the cruiser’s glove compartment. He has to bite back a laugh. Who says he’s going to be allowed back in a police cruiser anytime soon?

Five minutes later, the EMTs release them to the small circus happening just outside Rodentia’s north wall. The perp was taken away a long time ago, but there are still witness reports to take down and a media to keep at bay. The flash of their cameras produces a steady strobe light effect that’s giving Nick a headache. He’s been ordered not to go to that side of the cordoned off area, and he’s more than glad to oblige.

He slips down from the back of the ambulance van where he’d been perched then looks up to Judy. She’s frowning into the middle distance.

“Judy?” he tries. She flicks her good eye down to him.

“Can you give me a—?”

He holds up both hands. She grabs them and hops down, only stumbling a little.

“Thanks. No depth perception,” she says, dropping Nick’s hands but staying close.

“Does it hurt?”

“If I don’t move, no. Otherwise, yes, like the dickens.” Judy peers up at him. “I’m supposed to get to an ophthalmologist within 24 hours so they can get this thing out of my eye. Shouldn’t stay there.”

“Sure.” Neither of them move. Nick opens his mouth, closes it. Judy breaks into a weak smile.

“Baller of a week, huh?”

He’s so grateful for that one, dumb little sentence that it makes him dizzy.

“I dunno.” He sticks his hands into his pockets. “I liked the symmetry of getting beaten up by a bighorn on one end of the week and a vole on the other. I think we should aim for the middle next time. Find a nice, angry beaver, maybe.”

“Ugh, not beavers. You see what they do to lumber.”

“True.” Nick scans the area around them, searching for someone who’s looks like they know what’s happening. A camera flash goes off; he ducks his head again.

“Let’s get you to that ophthalmologist,” he says.

“We haven’t been dismissed.”

“Yeah, good, and I’m not having a one-eyed partner.”

“I’m fine for now.”

“You said it hurt.”

“I’m can tough it out.” Nick doesn’t have a ready argument against that one. He glances around again, and this time he spots Jacobs approaching them.

“Wilde, Hopps,” Jacobs says when he nears. He’s a timber wolf, but unlike the stereotypes, he’s not all that personable. Nick always gets a vague sense of being a kit in trouble when he talks to Jacobs. “Chief Bogo says he wants you back at the station and in his office as soon as you’re able.”

“Yeah, we will,” Nick cuts in, ignoring the unease that splashes through him. “But you’ve already got our initial statements and my partner’s got a serious eye injury. We’d like to take care of that, first.”

“Nick,” Judy mutters. Nick shoots her a look.

Jacobs eyes Judy’s gauze patch and gives a tight nod. “I’ll tell the chief to expect you this evening,” he says. Without another word, he does a tight 180 and heads back to the small collection of squad cars.

“Are you avoiding seeing Bogo?” Judy asks.

Nick doesn’t answer except to nudge her toward their cruiser. She looks like she’s considering resisting out of principle, but after a moment she starts moving. There’s a stiffness to her ears that tells Nick she’s not thrilled.

The couple of minutes needed to ease out of the morass leaves Nick’s hands tight-knuckle clamped around the steering wheel and his heart in his throat. A few of the media catch on that the fox is leaving the premises, but before they can descend on his car en masse, he’s scooted into a side road. Beside him, Judy has a sticky note with a number scrawled on it in one hand and her phone in the other. They head for the main thoroughfare while Judy speaks to someone about getting in to see a Dr. Sai on short notice.

“Okay,” Judy says a few minutes later when she hangs up. “They’re going to bump me to the top of the waiting list.”

“Where’s the office?”

“Rainforest District; sixth ward. Here I’ll get the directions.” They fall into silence after that, the only sound the tires rattling over crummy roads. Judy winces every time they hit a pothole; Nick tries to drive slower.

“You okay?” Judy asks when they reach the border of the Rainforest District. A second later, they emerge from the tunnel, and rain hammers against the windshield.

“Carrots,” Nick says, flicking on the windshield wipers. “I’m not the one with the pirate patch.”

Judy tilts her head, and Nick focuses on the slippery road. The silence has shifted from easy to thick.

“Nick,” Judy says. “Me and the liaisons will corroborate it; the guy was armed and you were acting in—“

“We need to talk about this?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Nick.”

Nick grimaces at the road. “Doesn’t matter if he had a bazooka; that was against every protocol, Jude,” he says. “You know it, I know it, the liaisons know it, that guy’s lawyers will know it. Bogo knows it. He’s going to have to suspend me. There’s no other option.”

“Know that for certain, do you?”

“You’re not the only one who’s read the handbook.”

Judy leans back in her seat. “Okay, so they suspend you. And then in a few weeks when the dust has settled and I don’t have to play pirate anymore, we learn from the mistakes and get back to work.”

“That’s not—“ Nick shakes his head. “I used my teeth on a rodent, Judy. You honestly think people are going to ignore that?” Judy has an expression like she knew the conversation was veering this way but she was hoping to stall it. Well, too bad, she started it. “You know better than anyone on the force that species matters. A fox cop screwing up like that, screwing up with rodents, matters. And frankly, I’m not sure why you didn’t see from the beginning that putting us with Little Rodentia reeked of politics, except here I was the idiot assuming it was all going to be saccharine good PR. Didn’t realize I was going to—“ He grinds his teeth together and changes lanes faster than he should. Judy is silent for a long while, long enough that Nick is compelled to glance over and check that she’s okay.

“You’re not…” Judy starts, then stops. Nick can practically hear her searching for a word that isn’t ‘savage.’ She changes tack. “I did think of politics when we were assigned,” she says, voice low. “But you have broken ribs, and I wanted you to have a chance to recuperate, so I focused on that part instead.” Her hand comes up to prod at the edge of her gauze patch; her face is pinched. “You didn’t seriously hurt the perp. Probably scared him more than anything else.”

“It’s not the point,” Nick says. “I’m worried about all the liaisons who had to see that. The civilian witnesses who might have seen that. I get it, right? That’s got to jerk the primal fears right awake. Three or four steps backwards; it’s the last thing we need after last year.”

Judy sniffs, and he can feel her eyes on him. “Dunno. You had teeth around my neck, and I was fine.”

Nick ducks his head. “We’re us,” he says.

Judy crosses her arms. “Yeah,” she says. “I guess so.”

***

Dr. Sai’s office is the standard green-gray walls and piles of magazines from the last six months. Nick sits beside Judy and flips through a home repairs magazine. He’s not sure why. He barely has two rooms, much less a porch. He wonders what that would be like, a porch. A lawn. He’s a city kid; it’s always been apartments and alleys for him, and he’s not convinced he could give it up, but porches also sound nice. He turns to Judy to ask her opinion on porches only to find her staring into nothing, her hands tangled up in her lap and her back ramrod straight.

“How bad?” he whispers.

Judy’s head ticks up. “Five.”

Nick rubs her upper arm and keeps his hand in the crook of her elbow for the rest of the half hour it takes for an assistant to call Judy back. He squeezes her arm one last time when she slips from the chair. He sets aside the magazines and bores a hole into the wall opposite him.

When Judy emerges from the back offices nearly an hour later, she has a more permanent patch over the injured eye and a posture that makes her look worn down to a nub.

“My eye,” she tells Nick when he approaches. “Looks disgusting.”

“Can I see?”

She ignores him and trudges toward the door, and Nick tries not to hover when he follows.

“Pain down, though?” he asks.

“Sure. Instead of a piercing stab it’s a general, uh, burning ache.” She glances back at him, and the smile she scrapes up is such a mixture of pathetic and stubborn that he comes horribly close to laughing.

The drive back to Precinct 1 is quieter, mostly because Judy looks like she wants to either sleep or hit someone, and Nick is trying to ignore the fact that he’s probably about to lose his badge. He wonders if they’ll give Judy a new partner, and that idea produces such twists in his gut he has to leave the train of thought altogether.

The station has a brisk flow of traffic when they enter. Clawhauser waves frantically at them, and Nick would be tempted to provide an excuse and keep walking, but Judy makes a beeline for his desk.

“Ohhh my gosh!” Clawhauser leans over his desk and stares at Judy’s patch. “I heard all about it from Jacobs. Will you be okay? Is it permanent?”

“Not permanent,” Judy assures him. “Just painful.”

“And right after the wrist too,” Clawhauser frets. “Nick, are you okay?”

“Me? Sure.” Nick slides on a big ‘ole smile. “Just a couple pieces of lead.” Clawhauser must not have heard about his mistake. Or he’s too nice to bring it up. Nick bets on the latter; he’s yet to come across a rumor Clawhauser didn’t already know about for hours.

Nick and Judy make their way past Clawhauser’s desk and take the long, excruciating walk through the bullpen on their way to Bogo’s office. Nick has to be sure not to keep his ears flat against his head and his stance relaxed. Judy’s shoulder keeps bumping into his side, and it takes him a few minutes to realize that she’s walking much closer than normal. When they reach Bogo’s office, Nick tries to raise his hand to knock and falters. Judy steps forward; she knocks with one hand and rubs his upper arm with the other.

“Yes,” comes the chief’s voice.

Judy squeezes Nick’s arm; he opens the door and reveals Bogo behind his desk with his reading glasses on. He glances up, grunts, and removes his glasses.

“Hopps, Wilde,” he says. “I’m seeing an awful lot of you two.” He gestures to the chairs across his desk. By the time Nick and Judy are seated in one chair, as per usual, Judy has her foot pressed against his, and Nick has decidedly reached a state of nirvana-like acceptance. Bogo, he decides, could tell him they’re going to ship him to the other side of the globe and Nick wouldn’t be fazed.

Bogo glances at a sheaf of papers. He rattles the sheaf of papers. He peers first at Judy, then at Nick, then at Judy again.

“State of your eye, Hopps?”

“Not serious, sir.” Judy straightens. “Been given a prescription for eye drops and asked to avoid strenuous activity for two weeks.”

“We’re going to make it three with that wrist.” Bogo scribbles something on his paper. “Desk duty until a practitioner gives a written statement you’re fit for field work.” Judy’s ears lower, but Nick can’t see how she’d argue this one.

“Wilde.” Nick straightens spasmodically. Bogo folds his hands on top of the papers and tilts his head. “I don’t think I need to say it, but I’ll say it anyhow. That was a sizeable mistake.”

“Yes, sir.” Nick gives a sharp nod of his head. Bogo doesn’t speak immediately, looking Nick over with a contemplative air. Nick bets he’s trying to sweat him out. Is he supposed to surrender his badge on his own accord?

“Our job is to protect citizens,” Bogo finally says. “That means victims, but it extends to the perpetrators as well. We’re supposed to stop them without going past the line and doing unnecessary harm. Using a predator’s teeth on a rodent-sized perpetrator blows right past the line.”

Nick can’t even manage the nod this time.

“Wilde?”

“Understood, sir.”

“Good.” Bogo slips on his glasses again. “Three-week suspension without pay.”

Judy stirs. “Sir, if I may—“

“Hopps, I understand you want to support your partner, and I understand his actions prevented further injury, but that’s quite outside the fact that he—“

“No, I know, I’m not arguing that. I just hope that after this all settles down, we won’t conveniently be assigned on the opposite side of the city from Little Rodentia.” Bogo eyes Judy, and Nick is torn between wanting to tell Judy to shut up and marveling at her sheer guts. “Because,” Judy continues. “I think the worse course of action would be acting like this means a fox shouldn’t be interacting with rodent citizens.”

Oh geeze. Nick’s back is ramrod straight, and he can’t find a good place to settle his eyes. Bogo taps his pile of papers into place.

“We can discuss this at a later date.”

“Sorry, sir, we really can’t.” Judy has a faint smile now. Of course she does. “The fact of the matter is the media’s attention is on this story, and Officer Wilde is ZPD’s first fox cop. How the department chooses to handle this, it means something. I think the events of last year only make it obvious. Being transparent is the only option. We need to acknowledge the mistake and how it’s made some people feel, and then we need to let them know Nick is going back to business as usual. Because I know for a fact the department’s history is littered with incidents of rookie cops making similar mistakes and being allowed to try again.”

Bogo’s eyebrows have risen to halfway up his forehead. He turns to Nick.

“Any thoughts?”

Nick glances at Judy. She looks back, her good eye wide. “I um.” He clears his throat. “I’d like a chance to apologize.” He pauses. “And yes, I’d like the chance to prove…” _I’m not just a sly fox._ “Prove goodwill, yes.”

“Mm,” Bogo grunts. He glances at the clock mounted on the wall. “I’ll speak to the PR office about editing the press release.” He returns his attention to Judy and Nick. “And, if you like, I’ll assign you two back to Rodentia the first day back. Although I suspect Officer Hopps will be crawling up the walls by then.”

“I’ll be the picture of composure, sir,” Judy says. Nick swears he sees the edge of Bogo’s mouth quirk up.

They stumble out of Bogo’s office a few minutes later. Nick feels like he just did a ten-mile run.

“Can you just—“ He touches Judy’s arm to still her then slumps down to press his forehead into her shoulder. He groans out a rattling sigh that twinges his ribs.

“Deep breaths.” Judy pats Nick’s head. “You still have a job.”

“You were born the wrong species,” Nick grumbles. “You’re supposed to be a, I dunno, something with zero sense of self preservation. The guy has horns.”

“What did you want me to do? Leave without making sure this is going to be handled properly?”

Nick shifted his head to peer at her. “That’s what most people would do.”

“I’m not most people.”

Nick snorts. “Yeah, most of us aren’t trying to save the world.”

Silence. “Are you angry?” She doesn’t sound quite hurt yet, but she’s angling toward it. Nick squeezes his eye shut for a moment then lifts his head.

“No,” he says honestly. “I’m remembering that you don’t know when to effing stop and how intimidating it is.”

Judy breaks into a wide grin. “Thanks,” she says, and she sounds genuinely pleased, naturally.

“You too,” he says. “Thanks. For backing me up.”

Judy just cocks her head and reaches out to punch his arm. She misses and scowls.

“Depth perception,” she mutters. Nick can’t help it; he laughs.

***

They get takeout and eat it sitting on a bench in the tiny park a few blocks from Nick’s place. They don’t talk much, maybe because of damaged eyes and broken ribs and sprained wrists, maybe because of the settling realization that the next three weeks will mean a departure from the patterns they’ve been building for a year. Nick tries to imagine Judy quarantined to a desk every day and almost winces. He’ll have to ask Clawhauser to keep her company every so often.

“Nick?” Judy breaks the silence. She’s sitting with her legs dangling toward the pavement; her wrap only half eaten. “You going to be okay?”

“Who, me?” Nick makes a soft _pfft_ sound. “Carrots, I was occupying myself fine long before the ZPD.” Judy gives him a slight look. “In a dubious manner, yes. Don’t worry; I’m going to catch up on my shows.”

“No, I’m not worried you’re going to hustle. I’m worried you’re going to stew in your own thoughts.”

Nick is silent for a beat too long. He shrugs and peels back the paper on his wrap. “I’m more worried you’re going to succumb to cabin fever,” he says.

“Who, me?” Judy echoes. She puts on an innocent expression that collapses into a grin then slides into a contemplative look. “Maybe it’ll be good for me to slow down.” Nick glances at her, but she doesn’t elaborate. They move on to other, more benign topics until the wraps are gone and the city has sunk into night proper.

Saying goodbye has an odd tinge to it. Nick almost says his standard, ‘see you tomorrow’ before he remembers. Judy has a look as if she almost did the same thing.

“Don’t drive the nice coworkers crazy,” Nick settles. Judy tilts her head and smiles.

“Don’t drive yourself crazy,” she counters.

They part ways. Nick winds his way to his street, his hands jammed into his pockets. The sidewalk is sparsely populated; the only other person is a porcupine approaching him on the sidewalk. When they’re several feet apart, the porcupine stops, glances up and down the street, and crosses to the opposite sidewalk. They don’t make eye contact with Nick, just keep a tight grip on their bag. Nick slows and watches the porcupine hurry down the sidewalk bathed in orange streetlight. He starts walking again, his ears flat.


	3. Chapter 3

The first few days of suspension are quiet. Nick avoids any semblance of news. He knows himself well enough, and he knows the world well enough, to understand that if he’s not going to let this get to him, he can’t acknowledge it in the first place. The only puncture to the bubble comes from Judy.

She calls often, at least once a day, usually to keep him updated on the station gossip. He tries not to let on that he relishes the calls; it’s like a quiet little reminder that the events of the past year weren’t some fever dream, that he really did do something as insane as go from a con man a cop.

On the fifth day of suspension, somewhere between the news that Olivia is pregnant and Bogo apparently got a parking ticket (Judy sounds far too delighted with that one) she slips in the fact that the ZPD released its official statement about the arrest of one Geoffrey D. Longtail.

“Oh?” Nick says as noncommittally as he can manage. He’s leaning against the sill of his single window, watching the trains rumble past his apartment building.

“Uh huh.” A pause and a rustle of papers. “Do you want to know what they…?”

“Ignorance is bliss, Carrots,” he says. He straightens and switches the phone to his other ear.

“I won’t go into details, then, but they keep everyone in a pretty neutral light,” Judy rushes, like she wants to respect his indifference but can’t quite keep her eagerness to herself. It’s such a Judy thing to do. “You remember the squirrel? Patricia Oak. She vouches for us.”

“Mm.” Nick follows a herd of zebras raucously making their way down the sidewalk.

“Nick?”

“I hear you.”

Silence. “Have you left your apartment?”

“That’s an awfully invasive question.”

“Nick.”

“Sure,” Nick lies. Another bought of silence.

“Can I bring you dinner tonight?”

Nick scrubs at the side of his face. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, that’d be good.”

Judy arrives that evening at 6 sharp with two boxes. She hands Nick one of them, and he opens it to confirm what his nose told him: a beetle burger from that one restaurant that’s amazing but pricey. He glances to Judy, but she’s already busy clearing off his little table so they have a place to eat.

They watch some mindless reality show while they eat and talk about things that aren’t work. Gazelle has released a new album; another bought of construction is expected to make the commute in Tundratown horrible. Judy’s trying hard; he appreciates it.

They talk far into the night, right into the small hours of the morning, and then they spend an hour arguing about whether Judy should go home or sleep on the couch.

“I’m a cop,” Judy says. “I know how to handle myself.”

“Yeah, and you have one eye.”

Nick wins, but only because Judy makes him promise to get coffee and doughnuts with her in the morning. He can’t help but wonder if she planned all this from the start.

The next morning, he tries feigning sleep but Judy has none of it. He calls her a tyrant and a bully while she calls him a crybaby and nudges him to get on some clothes and run a brush through his fur.

That morning is mild for the season. The sidewalks are thick with people enjoying the warm breeze and gentle sun. Judy leads them to a small pastry shop that Nick’s seen but never entered. They buy a dozen doughnuts and two strong coffees and sit across from each other at one of the small tables set up by the store window. The employees have left the door propped open, and the breeze sneaks in to mix with the aroma of baking and coffee beans. Nick wraps two hands around his cup, feels the heat seep into his skin, and listens to Judy vent about Rob who always gets his paperwork in late.

“Excuse me.”

Judy and Nick look up at the rhino dressed in a polo shirt with the store’s logo on the chest.

“I’m sorry,” the rhino says, her hands clasped. “But we’re going to have to ask you to clear the table. We like to keep them open for customers as they come in.”

Nick glances around the shop. Maybe a third of the tables are occupied. His gaze catches on a pair of lemurs. One of them is staring at Nick with narrowed, hard eyes. The other has their eyes fixed on the table.

“We’re paying customers,” Judy is saying. “And, pardon me, but it’s not exactly crowded.”

“We’d appreciate it if you could leave.” The rhino looks like she wants to be somewhere else right now. Nick can peg the moment Judy recognizes what’s happening, and he all but winces at the way she straightens and her ears bristle.

“You realize it’s against the law to discriminate based on species?” she clips out, her voice high and hard. Nick starts to reach out a hand.

“Judy, it’s—“

“No, it’s not fine.” Judy snaps to him. She returns her attention to the rhino. “Well?”

“Yes,” the rhino says warily. She glances behind her; toward the lemurs. “It would make some of our customers feel safer if you would—“

“Oh, so that’s the excuse.” Judy barks a laugh.

Nick, his ears high, wordlessly grabs his coffee and slides to the floor, ignoring the pain from his still-tender ribs. He gives the lemur a hard, long look, glances at the rhino, then moves toward the front door.

“Nick!”

Nick doesn’t acknowledge Judy; he focuses on keeping one foot in front of the other until he reaches the door. He can feel eyes on him, but he refuses to speed up. They don’t deserve to see him remove himself apologetically.

He’s halfway down the block when Judy catches up with him. She falls in step beside him; he can hear how fast her is heart hammering.

“I—“ Judy tries, then has to fall silent. Every part of her is trembling; her good eye blinks too much. “They’re about to get slapped with every discriminatory—“

“Leave it,” Nick says. “Laws are nice, but enforcement is a whole other mess. It won’t go anywhere.” Nick holds out a hand as an offer to take the box of doughnuts that looks like it’s a few seconds from being thrown to the pavement in pure frustration. Judy hands it over wordlessly.

“If we’d explained you’re an officer—“ she starts.

“Who’s on suspension for misconduct? Sure, that’d come off well.”

“But walking away, giving them what they want, how does that do anything?”

Nick glances down at her. “Confrontation isn’t always the best strategy,” he says. “Sometimes it’s about picking the right battles; fighting them a certain way.”

“Bullshit,” Judy spits out, and under any other circumstances Nick would be delighted at the expletive. “How are people supposed to understand how _wrong_ they are if you capitulate? You need to get up in their faces, make them uncomfortable; _that’s_ how you change anything.”

The back of Nick’s mouth sours. “That’s how it works for you,” he says.

“What, and it wouldn’t for you?”

“No.”

“Well why not?”

“It’s _different_ , Judy.” Nick turns to her, his voice rising. “You’d be an idiot not to understand how it’s different.”

“Well then I guess I am an idiot!” Judy shouts back. “Go on then, explain it to me.”

“I’m an effing fox,” Nick gestures with the doughnut box. “I’m violent, I’m troublesome. I start arguing, all it does is confirm what they already decided. And like hell I’m going to give them that satisfaction.”

Judy’s expression drops; the next second, she changes tack. “Well, I’m a rabbit. No one finds me threatening. Why didn’t you let me argue for you?” Nick shrugs one shoulder; Judy lifts her chin. “Maybe because I’m supposed to be quiet and docile? Because rabbits aren’t supposed to be defending anything; they’re supposed to be defended? That it, city boy?”

“Judy—“

“Oh come on, I saw how you were in Bogo’s office when I was sticking my neck out. You’d rather I not cause a scene.”

“I said thank you.”

“Anyone can say thank you.”

“Geeze.” Nick pinches at his eyes briefly. “Fine, yes, I don’t always like it when you argue for me.”

“If you’d argue for yourself—“

“But I don’t _want_ to; that’s the whole point. I should get to choose how to tackle my own problems.” He gestures. “And here you jump into a fight with everything that looks at us sideways. That’s not going to work long-term. That’s how people get in trouble before they can do anything substantial.”

“And you call what we’ve done insubstantial?”

“No, of course not.”

“Sure doesn’t sound like it.”

“Listen,” Nick growls. “All I’m saying is if you’d slow down and think, we could avoid some grief. Sometimes being loud only draws attention; the nail that sticks out the farthest is the one that gets hammered and all that. I mean, we could have avoided that bighorn incident if you’d slowed the hell down.”

Judy’s entire body stiffens. Nick’s grip on the doughnuts tightens.

“Fine,” Judy snaps. She reaches out and wrenches the box from Nick. “Fine,” she says again.

She turns and speedwalks down the sidewalk. Nick watches her leave with the heat of his coffee cup burning into his hand.

***

Nick calls Judy the next day and gets voicemail. Judy calls him the day after that and he lets the phone ring out. He has no idea what he’d say, and he thinks Judy would word vomit with the same problem. He sequesters himself to his apartment, where it’s safe, and blocks out the rest.

In the second week, he’s bored enough to do housework, including sorting through the mail that has built up on his table. He finds the ad for de-clawing and de-fanging while sitting in his armchair. He stares at it, folding and refolding the corner, and he has no idea how he can loathe and want something all at once.

***

Judy doesn’t bother to call the next week, she just shows up at his door with a carton of takeout. Her eye patch is gone, though the injured eye is still bloodshot.

“Sorry,” she says, and shoves the takeout up at him. Nick hovers at his doorway and can’t for the life of him come up with a reasonable response. He’s not sure if he’s supposed to be angry. He’s mostly tired and too relieved to see her.

“What, no flowers?” is what he settles on.

“I would have, but you don’t eat flowers, so they’d just sit there looking pretty.” Judy lowers the box slightly. “How soon can you be packed?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m using my overtime to take next week off. How soon can you be packed?”

“And we’re going to…?”

“Bunny Borough. I owe a visit to the folks and I’d like you to meet them.”

“Is that the best idea?”

“We’ll leave if anyone acts like a jerk, but I don’t think they will.”

Judy looks at him hopefully. Nick can feel the oppressive air of the apartment behind him.

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I'm doing the "Nick meets the folks" trope, but there's too much potential there to let it go. Shorter chapter today and then the fic wraps up before the weekend, hopefully. Thanks to everyone who's been reading!


	4. Chapter 4

The train to Bunny Borough is an old one with cracked seats and scuffed floors. The crowd is thin; more people are headed into the city than out of it. Nick keeps his tail in his lap out of prior experience and watches the surrounding faces change with each stop. At one point Judy gets in a making faces contest with a musk ox calf, and Nick comes dangerously close to laughing. Maybe she can tell, because after the calf and his parents leave the train, she jostles him with her elbow. He jostles her back.

“How’s the eye?” he asks when they’re two stops out from their destination. Judy scrunches up her nose.

“Okay,” she says. “I’m supposed to keep it covered but that eye patch was driving me crazy. If Lyle called me ‘pirate’ one more time, I was going to snap his neck.”

“Lyle’s built like a tank; good luck with that one.” Nick nudges her. “I’d have annoyed you much more creatively.”

“Like how?”

Nick considers this, watching the landscape blur past. “’Hey Hopps, catch,’” he says. Judy snorts and leans back in her seat.

“You’re such a jerk.”

“Only for you.”

They arrive at Bunny Borough in early evening; the station is painted in orange gold, and there’s a small welcoming committee waiting. Nick recognizes two figures from the photos on Judy’s phone, and sure enough, they reveal themselves as her parents when they rush forward to pull Judy into a four-armed hug. A few siblings pile on, and Judy is laughing the brightest laugh Nick’s heard from her in a while.

A couple Hopps kids are eyeing him with varied levels of interest and apprehension. One of them, a brother who might be a few years Judy’s junior, smiles tentatively.

“And this must be Nick.” Nick turns his attention to Judy’s parents. Her mother is stepping forward, a wide smile on her face. “I’m so glad we’re meeting you at last.”

Nick catches Judy’s eye. She raises her eyebrows.

“Same, Ms. Hopps,” he says, extending a hand.

***

Hopps family meals are an event. They sit at a table as long as the room, scattered with bowls heaped with salads and roasted and raw vegetables. Judy hands Nick a worn wooden plate and tells him to move fast if he wants anything. He might think she’s joking except he can see the gleam in some of her siblings’ eyes. He does get a full plate in the end, mainly because of Mrs. Hopps’ overseeing. She looks at him approvingly when Nick nabs seconds of a cranberry arugula salad.

While they eat, Judy’s parents fuss about her wrist and eye while she patiently repeats that it’s not nearly as bad as it looks.

“Who shot at you?” a sister asks, right as a brother jumps in, “Did you kill them?” Nick looks down at his plate.

“Just some rodent looking for trouble.” Judy glances at her parents, and Nick sees a lot in that glance. He bets they don’t hear about 90 percent of the things that happen in the ZPD. “It was fine,” Judy continues. “Went right to the ophthalmologist and he fixed me up.”

“You drove with one—“

“Dad, no, c’mon. Nick drove me.”

Mr. Hopps looks Nick over like he’s considering asking to see a driver’s license. Instead he touches the brim of his cap in a way that looks automatic.

“Grateful, Mr. Wilde,” he says.

Nick shrugs and stabs at a roasted zucchini. “We’re partners,” he says. “Part of the job.” He catches Judy’s eye. Her expression is bright.

After dinner, Ms. Hopps refuses to let Nick help with the washing up, and shoos him and Judy away so, “Judy can show you around a bit.” They make their way down one of myriad earthy hallways made homey with worn rugs and portraits. A small party of Judy’s siblings come along, snickering and punching each other with shyness but too curious to leave them alone. Nick tries smiling at them, and several shriek delightedly and bound away.

“’fraid you’re going to be a bit of a marvel while you’re here,” Judy confides, glancing back at her siblings. One of them grins impishly back.

“Never seen a fox before?” Nick asks.

Judy pauses. “Plenty of foxes,” she says. “Nah, you’re a city slicker. You’re all shiny and chrome.” Her country accent is coming out, Nick notes. A slight burr that he’s only heard otherwise when she’s tipsy.

“Shiny?” He glances back at the small entourage. “Any of you been to the city?”

“Saw it once,” says a tiny girl, only just grown out of being a leveret. “We was taking the train to Radishton and we saw it through the window.” She pauses. “Was pretty shiny.”

“The city looks shiny from a distance,” Nick says. “But it’s all grimy close up.”

Judy’s siblings look to her for confirmation; she shrugs with one shoulder.

“Most things are,” she says before opening a low wooden door. Nick has to duck to follow her.

“Go on,” Judy tells her siblings. “Give Nick a chance to catch his breath. You’ll have six days to bother him.”

“We’re not bothering no one,” a brother protests before the door closes.

“They really aren’t,” Nick says.

“Not yet,” Judy tells him wryly. “But you haven’t spent a whole week with a bunch of rabbit kids, have you? They need to be taken in doses ‘till you get used to them.”

They’re in a low, warm room with four beds and a bright knitted rug with patterns of lettuce and carrots. Nick spots his suitcase already waiting by a bedside table.

“This’ll be your room,” Judy says. “You’ll probably want the far right bed; it’s the longest.”

“Am I kicking someone out?” Nick asks, eying the extra beds.

“A few, but it’s spring and they’re probably going to make an adventure out of camping on the south hill. Don’t worry about them.”

“Are you sure? Jude, your family doesn’t have tons of space—“

“We always have space,” Judy assures him, patting his arm. “Just a matter of making it. Seriously, you’re a guest, it’ll be easier for you to accept it than to argue. My mom knows how to argue.”

“Knowing how you turned out, I have no doubt,” Nick grins. “Is she where you got it?”

“Got what?”

“The saving the world attitude.”

Judy laughs, but it’s a distracted sound. She sinks into one of the beds, a tiny little thing with a bright blue coverlet.

“Dunno,” she says. “I guess my mom’s temper is a little more heated than my dad’s but I don’t think either of them knew what to do with me when I was a girl.” Her mouth quirks into a smile. “Sometimes I want to apologize for making them worry so much.”

Nick hums and mirrors Judy’s position on the opposite bed. “I think they’re proud of you,” he says.

Judy tilts her head, eyebrows rising. “Yeah?”

“I could tell.”

“I think you’re just trying to make me feel better.”

“Never,” Nick says. “I have a keen eye for reading people.”

“So you’ve claimed.”

Outside the door, what sounds like a small stampede rattles past. Someone down the hall yells at someone else to quit using their brush.

“Is this okay, Nick?” Judy asks, pushing herself to a stand, her ears high. “Did I push you into coming out here?”

“Carrots, if I wasn’t out here, I’d be spending another thrilling day in my apartment watching trains go past. This is good.”

Judy nods, but her stance doesn’t relax. “I wanted to find a way to apologize,” she says. “Because I still feel horrible about—“

“You already apologized. I apologized. We’re done, Jude. I don’t hold grudges. Waste of energy.”

Jude doesn’t look all that convinced, but her ears relax into gentle curves. She tugs at her shirt thoughtlessly and nods to the bedroom door.

“C’mon, I’ll give you a tour of the rest of the warren and turn the kids loose on you.”

***

The next week passes in a gentle whirlwind of Bunny Borough’s green hills, rows and rows of crops, chaotic dinners, and too many rabbit kids to keep track of. Nick gets to know a few of them after the second day when they tug him out to the back pond and teach him to fish after he admits he’s never so much as touched a pole. Nick thinks they must find the whole thing hilarious, them knowing something a cop from the big city doesn’t. Judy certainly finds something amusing in the endeavor, sitting on a nearby knoll making flower crowns with her sisters and throwing out tips for Nick’s technique. Nick tells her, sweetly, to go suck an egg.

After the kids warm up to him, they barrage him with questions and requests for stories of his biggest gunfights while a few of them try to climb him like he’s a jungle gym or stroke his tail and marvel at how soft it is. He first has to admit he’s never been in a gunfight (he doesn't count Longtail's arrest), which one brother seems to take as a personal affront. But he does his best to make speed patrol and confronting loud teenagers sound exciting. He must succeed because he’s usually able to keep his audience rapt. He tries to avoid stories of his conman days; he doubts Mr. and Ms. Hopps would appreciate him putting ideas in their kids’ heads.

On the third day, he accompanies Judy and a few siblings into town to do errands. The town is about what Nick imagined for a sleepy farm community. Old but cared-for buildings, people greeting each other in the streets, almost all mom-and-pop stores. Judy points out a faded little boutique as the location of her first paying job as a teenager, and he can just imagine a bored, antsy Judy folding dresses and waiting for her chance to get out of the Borough.

Near the end of the day, Judy leads them into a small but bright bakery. It smells like sugar and fruit; Nick inhales hard without thinking.

“Hey Gideon,” Judy calls out. A stout fox appears from behind a tray of cooling bread. His face breaks into a grin.

“Well hey,” he says, approaching the counter. “Y’know, I’d heard you were in town.”

“Just for a week to visit the folks,” Judy says. She touches Nick with her elbow. “Gideon, this is Nick, my partner in the force.”

“Well I’ll be. I heard about you. The fox police.” Gideon says the word with a heavy twang; _po-lice_. Nick shakes his hand and comes away with fingers dusted in flour. “I have to say, I felt pretty proud when I saw you with Judy on the news in that uniform.” He focuses on Judy again. “You’re picking up the five pies, is that right?”

While Gideon puts their order together, he and Judy chat about his business (“Can’t complain, Miss Judy, I really can’t. Folks been real supportive around here.”) and town gossip (“Is it true that Heather finally left Oliver?” “Oh sure; that was a real shock when it happened. None of us could talk about anything else for a few days.”).

Gideon gives each of the kids a raspberry drop biscuit and tells Nick and Judy to see him again while they’re still in town. Nick follows Judy onto the sidewalk with his arms full of pie boxes and a final glance back at Gideon. He lets the kids bound ahead of him and Judy before leaning toward her.

“You friends with that guy as a kid?” he asks in a low voice.

“Why, jealous?”

“No, I thought you said you’d had, and I quote, an iffy childhood with foxes.”

“Um, yeah. I did. With that one, in particular.” Judy glances around them before continuing. “He was a bully before he grew up and matured some. One time I fought him back and he gave me these.” She points to the hair-thin scars on her cheek. Nick stares hard at them. He tries to imagine a chubby, affable baker beating up on another kid like that. Judy lowers her hand. “I still remember, he told me I didn’t know when to stop.”

Nick frowns and shifts the boxes of pie. “I seem to recall myself saying something similar,” he says.

“Um. Possibly, yes.”

“I’m a little uncomfortable to be echoing your bully.”

“It’s _true_ ,” Judy says, shrugging. “My parents have said it; Bogo’s said it. I don’t think it’s a secret.”

“I’m glad you’re so introspective.”

Judy shrugs and stares at the sidewalk. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot the last few weeks. Since the bighorn incident.” Nick’s stomach takes an uncomfortable tumble.

“You’re not blaming yourself for that, are you?”

“Who else am I supposed to blame?”

“The perps?”

“C’mon, Nick.”

Nick is silent for a moment. “I don’t blame you,” he says.

“Oh, well, wonderful,” Judy says. “That’s one.”

“Judy.”

“Listen, I’ve gone over this I don’t know how many times. We were told to hold and wait for backup. I decided to go ahead anyway. We lost the perps and you got banged up. All because I thought Bogo was giving us backup because he didn’t trust us, because we’re too small. Because I’ve still got this need to prove to everyone that I’m as good as them.”

“You are as good as them.” They slow down at an intersection; small cars trundle past. Nick squints into the afternoon sun. “I remember in Rodentia when you plowed forward into a load of bullets. I thought you were incredible, then. I know you feel bad about the bighorns, but I also think you shouldn’t confuse impatience with fearlessness.”

Judy is silent for a beat. “It was still my idea,” she says.

“And I went in there with you. I think I deserve as much of the blame.”

“I instigated—“

“Don’t care.” The crosswalk flips to green; Nick hefts the pie boxes and leads Judy across the stripped pavement. “We’re a team. We share things like this, otherwise what’s the point?”

Judy is contemplative as they reach the edge of the town center, and the sidewalk filters to a thin track beside the main road. Her siblings bound ahead, shouting jokes and chasing one another.

“Don’t go near the road!” Judy warns them. She slides her eyes to Nick. “That means we share what happened when arresting Longtail.”

Nick grimaces, because he should have known that would come up.

“Do your parents know?” he asks.

“Know what?” Judy looks ahead again; he can see her mentally counting pairs of ears to be sure no one’s been lost.

“That I’m suspended because I used teeth?”

“No. That’s your business.”

Nick hesitates. “Do you think I should get my teeth blunted?” He’s not looking at Judy, so makes a surprised, “oof!” when she wallops his arm.

“Hey!” He ducks away. Judy has stopped walking, so he stays where he is as well, his arm throbbing.

“Nick, you moron,” Judy says. Her fur prickles and she looks this close to walloping him again, so he keeps his distance. “Why would you do something like _that_?”

Nick’s ears have sunk against his head. “If they were blunted I couldn’t hurt—“

“Yeah, sure, and I’ve got back legs strong enough to knock someone out. You want me to get rid of those, too?” She starts walking again, her head lowered. “C’mon, Wilde, I thought you were supposed to be the smart one here.”

He stares after her for a moment before following. When he draws near, she rounds on him and almost sticks a finger in his eye with her jabbing.

“There’s nothing wrong with who you are, or what you are,” she grits out. “And if I have to fight the whole world to prove it to you, so help me, Nick, I _will_ do it.”

She whirls around again and keeps stalking forward, shouting at her siblings to watch it before they hurt themselves. Nick gingerly follows a few paces behind. He doesn’t trust himself to speak because otherwise he might say something unbearably saccharine. The houses have petered out into swelling hills stippled with freshly planted fields. It’s like something from a postcard.

“Can you really knock someone out with your legs?” he asks.

“Yes. Don’t make me prove it.” Her voice has softened, and Nick feels secure enough to fall in beside her. She looks worn now, but there’s a tiny smile hiding in the corner of her mouth. Nick jostles her with his elbow. She jostles him back.

At that moment, one of Judy’s sisters, the one who saw Zootopia from the train, comes up to them and reports that Kelly has fallen and twisted her ankle and has started crying.

“I told you guys to be careful.” Judy follows her to where the rest of the group is crowded around a wailing girl. Nick watches from a distance as Judy kneels beside Kelly and examines the ankle.

“It’s a little swollen,” she says aloud. “You probably shouldn’t walk on it.” She glances at Nick thoughtfully, who lifts his eyebrows in reply.

That’s how they arrive home with Kelly’s riding on Nick’s back and all the kids—each bearing a pie box—bounding ahead to tell the rest of the family about how Nick saved the day.

***

On the last night before they’re due to return to Zootopia, the kids convince Nick, and by proxy, Judy, to camp with them on the south hill.

“I’ve never really camped,” Nick confesses to Judy that night over dessert. “Unless you count being homeless under a bridge, which I don’t.”

“Camping is nicer,” Judy promises; he can see sympathy in her eyes. “There’s s’mores and a fire. It’ll be fun.”

It is fun, in the way that hanging out with Judy’s family has proven to be fun. Nick has his entourage established by now, his own gang of rabbit kids who regard him as a living jungle gym-slash-fountain of true crime stories (G rated). Mrs. Hopps brings out extra blankets in case they get cold and bottles of water. She pats Nick on the head once, and that sends a little shock through him. For a moment, he is put in mind of his own mother.

Later that evening, after Judy and Nick have bowed out of another game of Blind Man’s Bluff, they sit beside the campfire and watch the rest of the group have at it. Nick’s tail is sore from when someone trod on it, but it can’t pop the little bubble of contentment in which he’s found himself. He wraps his arms around his shins, rests his cheek on his knees, and watches Judy filch a marshmallow from the bag.

“I got the email from Bogo this morning,” she’s saying. “We’re back on patrol next week, and he’s assigning us to Rodentia again like he promised.” She glances at him. “He wants you to release a statement before starting work. A public apology.”

“Yeah, I expected that. I’ll write something on the way back home tomorrow. You’ll have to proofread it for me.”

“Sure.” Judy sets aside the marshmallows. “You going to be okay? Going home?”

Nick shifts his eyes to the game. “Yes,” he says. He can feel Judy watching him, waiting for an elaboration. “This is what it is, right?” he says. “Three steps back, a few shuffles forward. I guess it can feel hopeless, but if we don’t keep trying to move forward, then we’ve really lost.”

“Yeah,” Judy breathes. “That’s true.”

They fall into easy silence for another round of Blind Man’s Bluff. When the blindfold gets passed to someone new, Nick suddenly turns to Judy.

“Thanks,” he says.

Judy leans back on the grass, giving him a funny look. “For dragging you out to the boonies?”

“Letting me meet your family. It’s been nice.”

Judy laughs like he might be joking, then shrugs. “My family has a way of distracting.”

“Not just that.” Nick lifts his head and picks at the grass near him. “I was barely into my twenties when I lost my mom. It’s nice to remember what family can be like, that’s all.” He can’t remember discussing his mom this directly, but here in the countryside with laughing kids a few feet away and Judy beside him, it feels okay. He looks over at Judy, and she’s got that big-eyed, sympathetic look that, on anyone else, would make him start snarling. That must be another facet of this friendship thing, he considers. Having people who are allowed to break the rules.

“I’m sorry,” Judy says. She pauses. “Can I ask…?”

“Complications from heart disease, I think was the official reason. It happens.”

Judy rests her crossed arms on her knees. She seems to think a moment then says, “You never mention siblings. Aunts? Uncles?”

“My mom used to talk about a cousin. Never knew my dad.” Nick shrugs noncommittally.

“Well.” Judy scoots closer so she can hook her arm through his. “I guess you’ve got me.” Her voice is gentle yet she still manages to throw the statement down like a gauntlet. It’s so quintessentially Judy, and when Nick looks at her, she’s brimming with fierceness and loyalty and, frankly, it terrifies him. He wasn’t supposed to have a best friend like this. He wasn’t supposed to have a best friend, period.

“That a promise?” he asks. He doesn’t coat the question with enough sarcasm, and the result feels overwhelmingly raw. He wants to snatch the conversation back with some witty comment. But it’s not a dealer or a social worker next to him. It’s Judy.

Her ears relax. “Yes,” she says. A pause, and she takes pity on him. “Binding. You’re stuck with me, Wilde.”

“Darn.” Nick sags against her and surveys the ongoing game. “Are these guys part of the package?”

“Absolutely.”

“Excellent; I always wanted my own rabbit gang. I’m returning Randy, though. Randy’s a pain in the butt.”

“Randy has some maturing to do.”

Judy leans against him too, her grip on his arm almost too tight, but he doesn’t consider pulling away.

***

They take the train back to the city in the early morning, before the sun’s had a chance to properly rise. Judy’s parents see them to the station; Ms. Hopps fusses about the bundles of food she’s sending with them; Mr. Hopps acts very gruff except for when Judy gives him a final hug. Nick’s entourage keep climbing onto his shoulders and begs to be taken along, and they only climb down when Ms. Hopps tells them that with this behavior, they won’t be allowed to so much as leave their rooms again, much less the Borough.

Nick and Judy press their faces to the train window and wave at the Hoppses long after they’ve slid from view. Once the train has picked up a brisk speed, Nick pulls out his laptop while Judy grumbles something about not getting her coffee that morning and pillows her head on his shoulder. Nick tells her this is the kind of thing she should consider before getting addicted to caffeine. Judy mumbles something that sounds like, “go suck an egg” before her breathing evens out. When Nick checks, she’s out like a light.

The trip is long enough for Nick to type out a rough draft of his apology. Granted, he spends most of that time staring at the blurring landscape and trying to think of the right words. How to be humble without groveling; repentant without seeming disingenuous. It should be easy for someone who used to sell sub-par lumber on a regular basis, but he only starts writing halfway through the trip, and when they reach Zootopia suburbs, he’s tempted to delete it all.

Judy wakes a few stops away from their destination, and Nick promptly shoves the laptop in her direction.

“I don’t know,” he says bleakly. “I think it’s horrible.”

Judy rubs the sleep form her eye, gives Nick a long look, and tugs the computer into her lap. Nick fidgets with the hem of his shirt while she reads.

“No.” She looks up. “Not horrible. It’s very good.”

Nick squints. “I think you’re just trying to make me feel better.”

“Never.” Judy hands the laptop back. “There are a few rough spots, but I think you’re on the right track.”

Nick scans the paragraph again and sighs, clicking the laptop shut. “Bogo’s going to want to read it before it goes anywhere. And the PR office will probably just give me their own statement.” He sinks down in his seat. “ _PR_ ,” he mutters.

“The PR have their job to do; we do ours. It works out in the end,” Judy says serenely. She reaches out and tugs the laptop from Nick’s hands, bending down to stash it in his bag. When she straightens, Nick sighs again and lets his head rest on top of hers. She pats his leg and leans into his side.

The train rounds a wide curve, and there, through the opposite window, appears downtown Zootopia. The early morning sun catches on the skyscrapers and glinting rows of cars and sky trams.

“It does look shining from here,” Judy says.

Nick studies the view.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “It does.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we go! Sorry to those who might have wanted them to get together romantically, but I'm more of a platonic person myself. ^_^
> 
> Thanks again to everyone who's read!


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